Oracle 8i on Linux RH7.X Installation HOWTO

Following this HOWTO you should be able to get "Oracle 8i, version 8.1.7,
Enterprise Edition for Linux" installed on a RedHat 7.X distribution (and, we hope, on distributions based/derived from it.) You will
also have some few hints at how to create a database.
We decide to write this notes because we did not manage to get through the installation, simply following the already existing "Oracle 8 for Linux" HOWTOs,
and Oracle documentation and we found people on the net experiencing our
problems.

This document is for people who want to install Oracle 8i
version 8.1.7 Enterprise edition on Linux RedHat 7.2. At the time Luca
Roversi tried to combine the twos, he could only find people on the net who was
wandering why previous HOWTOs could not lead them to a successful installation.

We have not yet realized the points where this HOWTO substantially differs from
previous HOWTOs on the same subject; however, it lists operations that seems to
be correct.

Distribution

We focus on a Linux RedHat 7.2 distribution, since we had problems
with it and we wanted to use it. The steps we are going to describe should work
on any Red Hat 7.2 based Linux distribution.

Distribution Setup

We assume you have your Linux RedHat 7.2 box installed and working in a
reasonable way for you. In any case, 'base' packages, X Windows (the
installation routine is a Java GUI) and the development tools
regardless of whether you intend doing any coding or not is what you need.

and create a symbolic link to the folder the command here above has just
created:

bash# ln -s /usr/local/jdk118_v3 /usr/local/java

Kernel parameters

Oracle documentation suggests that you make changes to the Linux kernel
so you can get more shared memory.
If you decide to follow that way, keep the instructions in the Oracle
documentation and the
Linux Kernel HOWTO at hand to build your
new kernel.

In fact, the required changes can be made by setting some parameter in a
suitable initialization file. Just follow some steps:

bash# cd /etc

and create a new file rc.config, if it does not exists.
Inside rc.config copy the following four lines:

and we played around with the default options. This allowed us to generate an
instance of Oracle 8i we could use for teaching purposes, during an
undergraduate course on the foundational principles of data bases. If you need
more professional-oriented instances, consult other HOWTOs or read Oracle
documentation.

In any case, at this point, what you should be able to do is to let
interactive Oracle sql interpreter SQL*Plus run, by issuing:

bash$ sqlplus

and by choosing one of the following two default account/passwd pairs
that Oracle creates by default. The first pair is:

user-name:sys
password:change_on_install

while the second is:

user-name:system
password:manager

However, if you, just for example, want to connect from/to another machine
we address you to other HOWTOs; for example, Stephen Darlington's
"Oracle for Linux Installation HOWTO" covers this
subjects and gives other useful hints in its final sections.